The Hungarian Jewish Cultural Center in Budapest also contains the renovated Keren Or Synagoge, Hungary’s first newly build synagoge since the Holocaust. Sunday’s ceremony with Metzger, Israel’s highest religious authority, was the highlight of a conference on Jewish culture and education attended by Jewish leaders from especially Central and Eastern Europe.
At the meeting, rabbis expressed worries that nearly eight decades after Adolf Hitler came to power, his ideology has an increasing number of followers in former Communist nations. In Hungary there are several far right groups, including the Magyar Gárda, or Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group with at least 1500 active members. Even some church leaders support the group. Magyar Gárda has denied it is extremist, but critics point out that its uniformed followers march behind a flag used by Hungary’s pro-Nazi regime during World War Two,
Chief Rabbi Metzger said he had discussed these developments with politicians and urged the government and opposition to support religious Jews. "Antisemitism threatens democracy," he told the leader of the influential Fidesz opposition party, Viktor Orbán, according to officials with close knowledge about the meeting. He apparently gave a similar warning Monday, June 24, to Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány.
NO SUPPORT
Hungary’s first rabbi since the Holocaust, Slomó Köves, said he regrets that Hungarian authorities seem not willing to support Orthodox Jews. "The Communist regime forced all Jews in 1960 to unite in one organization," he told BosNewsLife. "However after the changes in 1989, especially Orthodox Jews wanted again to start their own organization. But the Hungarian government views that apparently as headache and doesn’t give us financial or moral support."
Communism also made it more difficult to discover who is Jewish in Eastern Europe, rabbis concluded at this weekend’s meeting in Budapest. "About one-fifth of the 1.5 million Russians who emigrated to Israel isn’t really Jewish,”Köves added." They falsified documents."
Besides, he said, there are difficulties surrounding Jewish marriages. “It’s very difficult for rabbis to know who is Jewish because for at least two or three generations Jewish life wasn’t encouraged.”
JEWISH REVIVAL
Yet, he suggested that the Jewish meeting in Budapest was prove that Jewishness (re)lives in Hungary. "Our [Orthodox] group has some 7,000 active members, that’s about one-fifth of the religious Jews in this country."
He is hopeful that more will follow as there are an estimated 100,000 Jews in Hungary, the second largest Jewish community in Eastern Europa, after Russia.
There were more Jewish people in Hungary, but some 600,000 Hungarian Jews were massacred during World War Two.
